I don't know why I haven't put this on here til now, but arbitration for my grievance cases with the Post Office is set for June 9th.

Also have signed up to take 2 Excel continuing ed classes at Gainesville State. One day classes covering basic and intermediate. I know how to use Windows apps, I just need the specifics for Excel. That at least will allow me to put Excel on my resume.

gOS working out well on the netbook. Will play Pandora, YouTube, etc. It's finally turned into a good little machine instead of a problem child.

Have been posting a fanfic I'm writing for WoW on Fanfiction.net and had 2 people favorite it so far. It's only been up about a week. So I'm kind of bemused by that. Wondering if history is going to repeat itself. Waiting to hear "Are you a professional writer?" on the reviews. This time, though, I don't think I'll get delusions of grandeur.

Finally got around to fixing the netbook. When Ubuntu NBR updated the last time the wifi stopped working, and the video and sound had never worked. So I decided to try another Linux distro. I downloaded gOS Gadgets and installed via a USB install. Video and sound worked immediately, wifi with the addition of the old Linksys USB wifi dongle. Internal wifi still doesn't work but this seems to be a common problem for HP Minis.

So far it works very well. gOS is based on Ubuntu, so I don't understand why Ubuntu doesn't work. The Gadgets part refers to Google Gadgets. It's heavily based on cloud computing.

Got a new 4gig SD for it as well, so plenty of open space. Now to fill it up.

ETA to shipping, May 19th.

Shiny shiny shiny.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

That is all.

We have yet to find out any details re the REC closing.

I'm bumming out at the moment. I've got to dismantle the LLC and go close out the bank account. Put the remaining money back in my savings account. Because I might actually need that $390 in the near future.

My usual method these days of dealing with major depressive incidents is to go buy something fabulously expensive and electronic, and I know exactly what I want. I even have an excuse, getting my usual Christmas present for myself. With that $390 I could even get it handily, as it's about $320. But of course I can't do it. And that's aggravating me no end. Strangling people doesn't solve any problems. Neither does buying an EEE PC 901 with 1gb RAM, 16gb SSD, and Linux. (They use Xandros. I'd have to locate an external CD drive and burn a copy of Ubuntu Netbook Remix and install it before I could use the EEE without holding my nose. But that's a small consideration.)

Oh, and I looked up how much they're selling the Merakis for these days, and they've inexplicably trippled the price of their standard indoor model. So that was one instance where being an early adopter paid off in spades. So guard those $50 Merakis with your lives, cats and kittens. Worth their weight in platinum, at least. (smishes Meraki, you make my life complete and wireless all at the same time!)

JCF RoundTable tonight, and I have no idea what to talk about.

It also bums me out that I was only just acquiring a life and now I've got to up sticks and start over somewhere else. The JCF, the magazine... then somebody somewhere hit the reset button. This too makes me want to strangle people.

Oh well. Not much I can do about it, or even think about it until I have some answers. Like where I'm being posted, yadda yadda.

OpenOffice's built-in PDF maker can be set to encrypt said PDF files, unlockable with a password.

Thus, should I choose to do the quarterly novella 'zine I've been playing with as a thought experiment as an e-book PDF, I can lock the files with a password only available if one pays the subscription price. Which would be lower due to lack of printing costs, etc., of paper copies.

And PDFs can work on almost anything. That's the whole point of them. Portable Document Format.

There's now a PDF reader for the new iPhone for Zarquon's sake.

In the next few days I will be switching over to the Xandros Desktop Linux operating system due to the complete fubar that Windows will soon become when Vista infects the entire world (see Cory Doctorow's most excellent reading of Peter Gutman's Vista security assessment for an entire world of reasons why this is a good idea).

Xandros seems to be a most excellent GUI system that will do everything I do currently with XP, for about half the price... a price that also includes migration software (Versora) and an entire CD of applications. There is a free version if you are interested in giving it a try. Currently I am awaiting an answer back from Xandros tech support as to what I need to ensure my ITunes library doesn't get lost again. As it's on an external HD I want specific instructions on what to do to make that particular transition as seamless as possible. Xandros has its own music manager, and apparently you can't get ITunes for Linux. I assume Xandros won't have any problem recognizing an external HD, but I have had enough problems with trying to transfer my library. I don't know if I can get CopyPod for Linux systems, or anything similar.

For the moment just going to do Newton with the Xandros. Once I know what I'm doing and I'm certain the loan for Copernicus is paid off (any day now), I might put it on Copernicus too.

I'll let you know how it goes.